Kin of 5 New Tribes missionaries slain in Colombia sue Chiquita

March 15, 2008|By Gary Taylor, Sentinel Staff Writer

The families of five Florida-based missionaries kidnapped and slain by Colombian terrorists filed suit this week against Cincinnati-based Chiquita Brands International, accusing the well-known banana grower of providing the killers with money, guns and ammunition.

Mark Rich, Dave Mankins and Rick Tenenoff were kidnapped in Panama by guerrillas and taken to Colombia in January 1993. Their bodies were never found, but a judge declared them dead in 2002. Steve Welsh and Timothy Van Dyke were abducted in 1994 from a mission school in Colombia, taken into the jungle and killed.

All five were missionaries with Sanford-based New Tribes Mission, which also joined in the suit.

Tuesday's filing in Miami federal court came almost one year after the U.S. Department of Justice accused Chiquita of funding the right-wing paramilitary group Autodefensas Unidas de Col ombia, or the United Self-defense Forces of Colombia, known as AUC.

Chiquita entered into a plea agreement that included a $25 million fine. The company maintains that a former banana-producing subsidiary was forced to make payments to paramilitary groups to protect the lives of its employees.

What prompted the suit was another Justice Department finding that Chiquita had made payments between 1989 and 1997 to the largest left-wing guerrilla group in Colombia, Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, which the families blame for the missionary deaths.

"That started the ball rolling," said Gary M. Osen, an Oradell, N.J., attorney working for one of the families.

A number of lawsuits have been filed against Chiquita on the behalf of Colombians who were victims of the guerrillas, Osen said. "This is the first case that involves American citizens."

Although Justice officials accused Chiquita of giving money to the guerrillas, the suit filed Tuesday alleges Chiquita provided weapons and ammunition as well.

The FARC and the AUC have been designated by the U.S. State Department as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

Rich's widow, Tania Julin, now remarried and living in Winter Springs, said she was "horrified" when she heard Chiquita had been accused of funding the guerrillas in Colombia. "I had no idea that an American company would be involved in something like that," she said.

"People knew all along what they were doing and chose to ignore it," she said. "That makes it all the more painful."

Julin called the years of dealing with the loss of her husband "unimaginably hard" and said she hopes the results of the suit will provide "some sense of justice."

All of the slain missionaries left behind children, many of them now adults and some with children of their own, Julin said. Her two daughters, 2 1/2 and 11 months when their father was kidnapped, are now teenagers.